10 Minutes With Tony Robbins

How can a business owner grow his or her profits by 50% in the next 12 months?

The key to making documented, explosive profit gains is optimisation and maximisation.

The goal is to make small, incremental changes that together make your entire business significantly more efficient and profitable.

If you’re not doing this already, you’re working hard every single day and you’re still not at the level you deserve. The secret is, little things aren’t little – they’re everything. Those little details – every lead you generate, every margin you increase, every promotion you run, every transaction you make, every sales person you hire – if you don’t measure it, you’re not managing it. So you’re not managing the driving force of what comes into your business to get those profit levels you deserve.

We’re treasure hunters. We know there’s treasure in our business, no question, and we’re going to find it no matter what it takes. If we try something and it doesn’t work, we’re going to try something else, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll make another change, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll shift something else until we get the result we’re after.

You say that looking through ‘a new filter’ can help entrepreneurs uncover solutions to business problems. What do you mean by that?

There are basic keys that offer entrepreneurs solutions, keys like finding a way to get more clients, and finding ways to increase your average transaction value. But beyond those basic keys, you need fresh perspective, or what I would call a new filter.

Take pricing for example. I did my first seminars for free. I advertised, I marketed, I did everything. I showed up in this room, I expected 500 people. Seven people showed up. Guess what I did for them? I dumped everything I had on these seven people. Can you imagine us in a room for a day? But then I changed my filter. I changed my pricing, and I changed the size and venue for my seminars.

Instead of intimate sessions in my living room, we were doing events at Madison Square Garden and people could learn from everyone else sitting there, which added even more value and reshaped the entire experience of the service.

In many ways, it’s the same core product, but a different filter can make a massive difference.

How can an entrepreneur become a better person in order to become a better business owner?

People may come to my events to change their business, but I’m also here to help them change their lives.

We all want to take both our business and our lives to the next level, and your business is a beautiful vehicle for doing that – it gives immediate feedback whether you’re in the right location, whether you’re telling the right story, whether you’ve got the right strategies. And it can provide a vehicle for your economic freedom and an expression of what you value most.

It’s important to remember that most people spend more time in their business than they do with their children, or with their spouse. For most business owners, the business is just an extension of their identity.

So when we can help people make a shift or a dramatic change in their own psychology, that spills over to impact their business and every other area of their life.

If you’re able to meet your top needs in a positive way, then your life will improve.

Similarly, if your business is able to first identify, and then meet, your clients’ top needs in a unique way, then you will develop a raving fan culture. Whether you’re becoming a better person or a better business owner, it’s really all connected.

Jason Fell is the technology editor of Entrepreneur.com in New York City. Previously, he served as online news editor of Foliomag.com, the online arm of Folio: magazine. He also worked as a staff writer for Soundings magazine and a reporter with the Journal Register Company of newspapers. Email him at jfell@entrepreneur.com. You can follow him on Twitter @jwfell.

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